Number of Hispanic Muslim converts growing

By TARA DOOLEY
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Religion Writer
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1537375
Huevos rancheros for breakfast; fasulye for dinner.
It was not an unusual menu that graced the table one
recent Thursday at Patricia El-Kassir's west Houston
home.
For El-Kassir, a Mexican-American convert to Islam,
starting the day with the Mexican egg breakfast and
ending it with a Lebanese meat-and-bean dinner meant
nothing more than the merging of cultures easily found
in Islam.
"One of the things that brought me to Islam, that I
think is so beautiful, is that Muslims come from all
nations," said El-Kassir, whose husband is a native of
Lebanon.
"You can be Mexican and be a Muslim and be happy," she
added. "You don't have to be torn between two things."
Though Muslims may live in all nations, when El-Kassir
first accepted Islam 16 years ago as a 15-year-old
student at Bellaire High School, she was one of few
Hispanic Muslims at Houston-area mosques, she said.
She didn't meet another Hispanic Muslim until she was
an adult living in Lebanon.
Now when El-Kassir looks around at local gatherings of
Muslims, she sees others with roots in Latin America.
She even has friends with whom she can discuss the ins
and outs of halal meat in tamales.
"In the last couple of years, I know more and more
Muslims who are Hispanic," she said.
Some Hispanic Muslims in Houston say the general
public often assumes they are of Middle Eastern or
Pakistani origin because of their religion. But where
they once were an unrecognized "other" in demographic
studies of American Muslim communities, the number of
Hispanic converts to Islam is growing -- if
incrementally, some say.
"This phenomenon is quite old," said Sheikh Zoubir
Bouchikhi, Imam of the Islamic Society of Greater
Houston's Southeast mosque. Bouchikhi also teaches at
Masjid El Farouq, a west Houston mosque where
El-Kassir attends prayers and Quran classes.
"It's not only in Houston but also all over the United
States," he said. "In the last five years we have an
increase in the number of people embracing Islam:
Latinos."
A study of mosques in the United States, published in
2001, indicated that about 6 percent of American
converts to Islam are Hispanic, said Ihsan Bagby, an
author of the report and associate professor of
Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky. About
27 percent of American converts are white, 64 percent
are African-American and 3 percent are a mixture of
other backgrounds, according to "The Mosque in
America: A National Portrait."
Statistics are hard to come by, Bagby said, but
Hispanics are becoming a significant minority of
American converts to Islam.
"I think what we see happening is that many of the
earlier Latino converts have developed more
sophisticated infrastructures, although it is in its
nascent form," Bagby said. "I think there is a lot
more available for Hispanic converts than in earlier
years."
Some of what is now available for Hispanic converts
comes from the Latino American Dawah Organization, a
group started about five years ago in New York City by
Samantha Sanchez and five friends.
Sanchez, who is studying for a doctorate in cultural
anthropology, had just become a Muslim and was
interested in discovering whether she and her friends
were the only Hispanic Muslims out there.
The organization has grown into a support network and
an information outreach that provides Qurans and
pamphlets on Islam in Spanish and runs a Web site,
www.latinodawah.org. The group now has a chapter in
Austin and is working on chapters in Illinois,
Massachusetts and Arizona.
"I would say (the Hispanic Muslim community) continues
to grow, and the more people know there is such a
thing as Latino Muslims the more it grows," Sanchez
said.
Part of the group's goal is to connect Hispanic
Muslims and offer services for new converts, said
Austin resident Juan Galvan, president of the group's
Texas chapter.
"When you go to a mosque and everyone is, essentially,
a foreigner, it can be a lonely type of experience,"
he said.
Hispanic Muslims in Houston sometimes still find
themselves victims of mistaken cultural identity --
especially women who wear traditional Islamic head
covering.
Juliette Oliva Enchassi has run into the confusion in
her job as interpreter at Texas Children's Hospital.
When she arrives to interpret for Spanish-speaking
patients, she has been mistaken for an Arabic
interpreter.
She has also been able to listen in on conversations
not meant for her ears, said Enchassi, who wears the
head covering called a hijab.
"I have been in stores where people were talking about
me in Spanish," she said.
In some ways, the confusion comes from a clash of
stereotypes.
Cristina Martino, who became Muslim about six months
ago, said that Americans immediately associate Islam
with Middle Eastern countries.
"A lot of people think I'm from Iran when they see me
wearing the hijab," the 21-year-old Venezuela native
said.
But recent converts also buck cultural stereotypes
that assume all Latinos must be Catholic, Sanchez
said.
"I think because they have never heard of such a thing
in a way, the Latino community is so stereotyped as
being Christian," she said. "There are not only
Christians, but there are also Latino Buddhists,
Latino Jews."
Many Hispanic converts to Islam once considered
themselves Christian.
Enchassi grew up in a strict Catholic family in
Mexico, but even as a child felt distanced from the
faith. As a teen, she challenged her mother on matters
of dogma.
"I had many doubts in my heart and my mind about my
religion," Enchassi said.
But Enchassi also thinks there were elements of her
upbringing that fit well with Islam.
The Latino culture of Enchassi's youth was very
family-centered. She was taught to obey her parents
and to believe in and fear God. As in Islam, even
simple tasks such as cooking involved prayer, and her
mother taught her that an egg was perfectly poached in
the time it took to recite the "Our Father," she said.
"My mother, without knowing it, was a Muslim,"
Enchassi joked.
Enchassi, 47, said she was introduced to Islam by a
Muslim brother-in-law and converted in 1993 after
marrying a Muslim. For her, Islam is a shield "we have
in a society worldwide that has lost its moral
values."
Bouchikhi said that some Hispanic Muslims become
interested in Islam when they hear that Jesus is
considered a prophet in the faith -- though not the
divine son of God and the path to salvation as
Christians believe.
El-Kassir's brother, Felipe Ayala, always questioned
the Christian idea of the Trinity. Finding Jesus as a
prophet -- but not divine -- in Islam felt like a
comfortable spiritual fit, he said.
"I already believed that Jesus was a special
messenger," said Ayala, who became Muslim about seven
years ago, inspired by his sister and the works of
Yusef Islam, the former rock singer Cat Stevens. "This
confirmed it. For me, it was a natural development."
El-Kassir's family moved to Houston when she was 8.
The family attended Catholic and Lutheran churches,
but they were never orthodox in their observances or
beliefs.
"My parents are not very religious," she said. "They
believe in God; they are good honest people who do
good."
As a teen, El-Kassir never felt spiritually lost or as
if something were missing in her life, she said. In
high school, she had friends of many faiths and found
herself intrigued by Muslims.
"I saw how they dressed; that sparked a curiosity,"
she said. "I went into a mode of wanting to learn. I'm
an avid reader, so I read and read."
What she found was "a religion of common sense," she
said.
Islam's emphasis on one God and belief that one's
deeds will be judged after death spoke to her.
El-Kassir, now 31, met and married her husband when
they were both students at the University of Houston.
She works as a bilingual fifth-grade teacher in the
Spring Branch school district. Though there are many
ways to hyphenate a demographic description of
El-Kassir, she describes herself simply as a Muslim.
But she tries to offer her four children the full
array of their cultural and spiritual identity,
teaching them Spanish and making sure they annually
visit relatives in Lebanon.
"They are American," she said. "Their mom is Mexican.
Their dad is Lebanese. They are Muslims. They get the
best of everything, I tell them."